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To anyone who hasn't seen Rogue One yet... I think it's the best Star Wars movie since Empire. Worth your time. Amazing fast-paced character development and a

To anyone who hasn't seen Rogue One yet... I think it's the best Star Wars movie since Empire. Worth your time. Amazing fast-paced character development and arcs (compare Star Wars to Suicide Squad if you really want to be impressed or see how badly it could have turned out), wonderful little cameos, rich visuals that show what the prequels could have been, and paramount a superbly written and acted story. (Spoilers) The ambiguous ethics of sending an assassin to kill Galen because The Rebellion didn't believe how he could leak truthful information (and keep this mission secret from Jyn in order to get her help locating her father) was especially well done. The concept of sides, Empire or Rebellion, being unclear to people until they join one was also woven in nicely -- normal people just want to go about their lives free from conflict. The most hotly debated topic between me and my friends though wasn't about ethics, it was about if Donnie Yen's character was using The Force or not. (Of course he was, and in prior movies plenty of characters used The Force before becoming Jedis.) https://dorksideoftheforce.com/2016/04/08/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-who-is-the-staff-wielder/ https://dorksideoftheforce.com/2016/04/08/rogue-one-a-star-w... Rogue One's story certainly muddies the waters a bit, but the fact Star Wars is willing to embrace more complexity and a blurring of the lines is great for the franchise and mature fan base. Someone woke up and realized that the value of the Star Wars ins't just how many lunch boxes it can sell, they can make a buck telling compelling stories as well. #NoEwoks #NoGungan

Anderkent 10y ago
YMMV. For me the attempts at a serious story fall flat due to the amount of plot holes and asspulls. I've enjoyed suicide squad a lot more - it wasn't trying to be taken seriously, so the absurdity didn't clash. Same with the previous star wars - it went for a very simple story, so it was harder to mess up Rogue One is pretty, sure. But the story is a chain of coincidences. No character, except maybe for Vader - who's mostly a cameo, actually tries to act according to its presented motivation, or tries to solve any of their presented problems. Throughout the movie character motivations are at best tertiary to firstly doing whatever is flashiest, or secondarily executing whatever morality cliche the movie is currently on. Basically, every character in rogue one is unbelievably stupid. And then you get to the 'science fiction' setting where battles between capital ships happen at 200m (but the bad guys only start shooting after the obligatory 5 minutes of tactical discussions), shooting at a force field that just destroyed multiple ships that rammed into it is a thing that makes sense, etc. Etc. Rogue One is still as much of a fairy tale as previous star wars moves; but it tries to pretend it's not. And that completely destroys any immersion the viewer might have.
- emidln 10y ago
  If the premise of the defense shield is that it can dissipate a certain amount of energy by distributing the energy across its whole, why doesn't throwing more explosives makes sense? Presumably the people doing weapons design in this fantasy setting have at least as much sense as we do now. This means a ship colliding holding weapons are unlikely to detonate completely (not armed) and thus not deal a ton of damage. This movie is set in a universe where less than 20 years ago, fully automated machines nearly destroyed those who remain. Both the complexity of a firing solution in space as well as explicit non-automation of some things rather easily suffice as reasons for a delay. This discounts surprise coupletely. I don't know much about magic space lasers, but I'm also willing to suspend disbelief enough to allow they have a limited range of effectiveness. If you wanted to make random technical arguments, I'd have imagined that "pew pew" sounds in space is where you would start.
  - Anderkent 10y ago
    The ships impacting and exploding on the gate are effectively oversized kinetic missiles. There's no way the things they're shooting can even compare. I wouldn't mind if they were shooting at the machinery controlling the gate/shield. But what was happening was clearly a case of 'we need to show the fighters trying to do something without actually having them try anything'.
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      Are you sure kinetic missiles is the best use of a starship's mass? If I have a few kg of enriched uranium, I don't turn it into bullets to shoot at the bad guy. Starships seem to have some kind of reactor as well.
deleted 10y ago
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ant6n 10y ago
One thing that did seem a bit silly is that every building with a function needs a whole planet: this is the refinery planet, this is the government archive planet, etc.
- ben0x539 10y ago
  Maybe they had all those planets sitting around to begin with and wanted to avoid single points of failures in the face of planet-destroying weapons!
  - ant6n 10y ago
    ...Then you should distribute the archive.
- VLM 10y ago
  The Republic/Empire was space based and something repeated over and over was that planet-side they were an analogy to the American experience in Vietnam where the villages pretty much do what they want in between being destroyed, but there's not really an area of influence on the ground. Meanwhile in space before the death star very little could stand up to the fleet and after the death star they had ultimate total stellar control. Likewise this is why blowing up one, admitted very big, battleship, meant the rebellion won. They had already won planet-side for all intents and purposes and now that the empire had little to no space superiority... Star Wars is very cross genre (come on, knights in shining armor and sword fighting monsters and wizards?) and part of the middle ages fantasy is an economic system of mercantilism. So the empire is not going to be amused with smugglers and they're gonna be very interested in regulation and taxation of interstellar trade etc. Another novelty is that HN is culturally extremely urbanite. In the US there are urbanite areas that are extremely crowded and everyone wants to live there solely because everyone wants to live there. However outside urbanite areas the "company town" is a meme that still exists even in post-industrial era. Most small cities or towns have the one big employer and everyone lives off them directly or indirectly. For many state capitals and state uni towns the "big employer" is the government itself. Very few people on HN will know that outside SV and NYC there are many towns that do virtually nothing but turn trees into paper or cast plastic into molds or refine oil or whatever their one big task is. Not unusual for the town to be the grain elevator and railroad, or its the manufacturing plant, or some kind of resource extraction site. If you spread humanity thin across the galaxy you'll end up with "the refinery town" being the only town on an entire planet. It has certain interesting implications WRT long term environmental issues. Everything in star wars is smokey and doesn't appear to be overly ISO9001 driven, unlike star trek. Several billion people living like that on a planet will screw it up pretty quickly, but maybe a thousand living in one town can maybe live that environmentally sloppy until the star novas in a couple billion years. You could live downwind of a cattle stockyard if you want, but if space travel is cheap enough, you'll end up with nothing but one cattle stock yard on a planet, because, why live there of all places?
k__ 10y ago
I find it interesting how polarizing this movie is. Many people told me it was crap, because the characters had no depth, so you didn't care when someone died. Just waiting for the next action to happen.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

Anderkent 10y ago

YMMV. For me the attempts at a serious story fall flat due to the amount of plot holes and asspulls. I've enjoyed suicide squad a lot more - it wasn't trying to be taken seriously, so the absurdity didn't clash. Same with the previous star wars - it went for a very simple story, so it was harder to mess up Rogue One is pretty, sure. But the story is a chain of coincidences. No character, except maybe for Vader - who's mostly a cameo, actually tries to act according to its presented motivation, or tries to solve any of their presented problems. Throughout the movie character motivations are at best tertiary to firstly doing whatever is flashiest, or secondarily executing whatever morality cliche the movie is currently on. Basically, every character in rogue one is unbelievably stupid. And then you get to the 'science fiction' setting where battles between capital ships happen at 200m (but the bad guys only start shooting after the obligatory 5 minutes of tactical discussions), shooting at a force field that just destroyed multiple ships that rammed into it is a thing that makes sense, etc. Etc. Rogue One is still as much of a fairy tale as previous star wars moves; but it tries to pretend it's not. And that completely destroys any immersion the viewer might have.

emidln 10y ago
If the premise of the defense shield is that it can dissipate a certain amount of energy by distributing the energy across its whole, why doesn't throwing more explosives makes sense? Presumably the people doing weapons design in this fantasy setting have at least as much sense as we do now. This means a ship colliding holding weapons are unlikely to detonate completely (not armed) and thus not deal a ton of damage. This movie is set in a universe where less than 20 years ago, fully automated machines nearly destroyed those who remain. Both the complexity of a firing solution in space as well as explicit non-automation of some things rather easily suffice as reasons for a delay. This discounts surprise coupletely. I don't know much about magic space lasers, but I'm also willing to suspend disbelief enough to allow they have a limited range of effectiveness. If you wanted to make random technical arguments, I'd have imagined that "pew pew" sounds in space is where you would start.
- Anderkent 10y ago
  The ships impacting and exploding on the gate are effectively oversized kinetic missiles. There's no way the things they're shooting can even compare. I wouldn't mind if they were shooting at the machinery controlling the gate/shield. But what was happening was clearly a case of 'we need to show the fighters trying to do something without actually having them try anything'.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    Are you sure kinetic missiles is the best use of a starship's mass? If I have a few kg of enriched uranium, I don't turn it into bullets to shoot at the bad guy. Starships seem to have some kind of reactor as well.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ant6n 10y ago

One thing that did seem a bit silly is that every building with a function needs a whole planet: this is the refinery planet, this is the government archive planet, etc.

ben0x539 10y ago
Maybe they had all those planets sitting around to begin with and wanted to avoid single points of failures in the face of planet-destroying weapons!
- ant6n 10y ago
  ...Then you should distribute the archive.
VLM 10y ago
The Republic/Empire was space based and something repeated over and over was that planet-side they were an analogy to the American experience in Vietnam where the villages pretty much do what they want in between being destroyed, but there's not really an area of influence on the ground. Meanwhile in space before the death star very little could stand up to the fleet and after the death star they had ultimate total stellar control. Likewise this is why blowing up one, admitted very big, battleship, meant the rebellion won. They had already won planet-side for all intents and purposes and now that the empire had little to no space superiority... Star Wars is very cross genre (come on, knights in shining armor and sword fighting monsters and wizards?) and part of the middle ages fantasy is an economic system of mercantilism. So the empire is not going to be amused with smugglers and they're gonna be very interested in regulation and taxation of interstellar trade etc. Another novelty is that HN is culturally extremely urbanite. In the US there are urbanite areas that are extremely crowded and everyone wants to live there solely because everyone wants to live there. However outside urbanite areas the "company town" is a meme that still exists even in post-industrial era. Most small cities or towns have the one big employer and everyone lives off them directly or indirectly. For many state capitals and state uni towns the "big employer" is the government itself. Very few people on HN will know that outside SV and NYC there are many towns that do virtually nothing but turn trees into paper or cast plastic into molds or refine oil or whatever their one big task is. Not unusual for the town to be the grain elevator and railroad, or its the manufacturing plant, or some kind of resource extraction site. If you spread humanity thin across the galaxy you'll end up with "the refinery town" being the only town on an entire planet. It has certain interesting implications WRT long term environmental issues. Everything in star wars is smokey and doesn't appear to be overly ISO9001 driven, unlike star trek. Several billion people living like that on a planet will screw it up pretty quickly, but maybe a thousand living in one town can maybe live that environmentally sloppy until the star novas in a couple billion years. You could live downwind of a cattle stockyard if you want, but if space travel is cheap enough, you'll end up with nothing but one cattle stock yard on a planet, because, why live there of all places?

k__ 10y ago

I find it interesting how polarizing this movie is. Many people told me it was crap, because the characters had no depth, so you didn't care when someone died. Just waiting for the next action to happen.

deleted 10y ago
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